30 Gigabyte
on a disk
The future of
optical data storage
is violet
Thomas Weber, Martinsried
Two disk formats are presently
fighting for first place as succes-
sor of DVD: Blu-ray and HD-DVD.
Both of them use the novel violet
laser diodes and both are leading
edge to what cost effective optics
can achieve. According to this
quality inspection during the
disk manufacturing process will
become challenging.
At the end of the 90ies, when DVD just
left the status of development techno-
logy leaders like Sony and Philips started
to think about the next generation of
optical data storage. The target for the
storage capacity was high-definition
digital television (HDTV) technology
requiring a capacity of 30 GByte per disk
and a data transfer rate of 30 – 40
Mbit/s. This improvement by a factor of
6 – 7 with respect to DVD was only
LASER+PHOTONIK 48 SEPTEMBER 2004
achievable, when the laser wavelength
and therefore the size of the structures
on the disk could be reduced substantial-
ly. According to the correlation
D ≈ 0,6 x λ / NA (1)
the diameter of the laser focus (FWHM) is
proportional to the wavelength and
inverse proportional to the numerical
aperture of the optical system. A violet
laser around 400 nm
therefore could reduce
the focus by 1.6 with
respect to DVD (650 nm)
increasing the storage
capacity by a factor of
1.62 = 2.6. First
attempts have already
been made towards
violet emitting semi-
conductor materials like
gallium-nitride or zinc-
Table 1: Comparison of the
disk formats DVD / Blu-ray /
HD-DVD
selenide. At least 1999 the Japanese
chemics manufacturer Nichia was able to
offer the first 5mW laser diodes at 405nm
based on GaN, developed under the
scientific leadership of S. Nakamura.
Competing Formats
According to (1) besides the laser wave-
length a higher numerical aperture is a
further method to increase the storage
capacity. Here two different competing
ways are used:
■ Sony and Philips in their ›Blu-ray‹-for-
mat decided to move from NA = 0.60
(DVD) to NA = 0.85. This causes the
objective lens to be placed very close
to the storage layer of the disk
requiring the protective cover layer
made from polycarbonate (CD 1,2 mm,
DVD 0,6 mm) to become much thinner
(100 µm) [1]. This structure results in
a few drawbacks: Surface defects or
scratches are much closer to the laser
focus and therefore give more
distortions in the read out process. The
small working distance could make the
 O P T I C A L D ATA T R A N S F E R A N D D ATA S T O R A G E

lens touching the

surface. The object-
ive lens has to have
a larger refraction
power and therefore
it has to be made
from two aspheric
surfaces or even two
independent lenses.
Spherial aberration
due to imperfections
of the cover layer
thickness are more
critical. The manu-
facturing process is
quite different from
the CD process or
DVD process, which Figure 1: Comparison of optical heads and structure size of CD, DVD and Blu-ray disks (courtesy of Philips research).
requires new manu-
facturing machinery.
■ Toshiba und NEC by introducing only a Quality control in disk production every disk is checked for its physical pro-
small change in NA to 0,65 try to keep perties during the manufacturing (e.g.
the disk and drive manufacturing pro- As an important step in establishing substrate defects, substrate thickness,
cesses as compatible as possible to DVD new formats the company groups define deformation, reflectivity). Therefore this
[2]. Drawbacks are: Storage capacity is detailed standards (›coloured books‹), kind of test is called ›physical test‹. In
40 % lower (this is said to be which contain the physical properties of the complementary ›electrical test‹ it is
compensated by more effective data the disks, the specifications of the disk checked whether all data can be read
compression algorithms). The format is drives as well as the exact data structure. back completely and correctly requiring
more sensitive to ›disk-tilt‹, i.e. a Only such strict definitions guarantee to fully play a random sample disk on a
deviation of the disk surface from that every disk can be read back on every drive. The time effort makes this test to
perfect flatness (disk deformation), drive – if both are according to the be performed offline only.
which can happen during the molding standard. For the disk replicators, which The measurement parameters of the
process. Therefore also here an replicate disk with highly efficient electrical test are divided as follows:
improvement of the disk manufacturing molding and coating processes the quality ■ RF parameters, i.e. the structure of the
machinery may be required. assurance is an important and central electrical high frequency signal that is
Table 1 shows a comparison of the control task. In quality testing online created by the reflected laser beam at
formats. Figure 1 compares the data tests and offline tests can be distinguished: place of the detector.
structures of CD, DVD and Blu-ray. In an online process for a few seconds ■ Digital errors, i.e. how precisely the »

LASER+PHOTONIK 49 SEPTEMBER 2004

 O P T I C A L D ATA T R A N S F E R A N D D ATA S T O R A G E
Figure 2: Typical eye-pattern of a Blu-ray disk, which is used for the
measurement of the parameter ›modulation I8/I8H‹
data can be extracted from the disk.
■ Physical parameters, i.e. the precision ■ The whole optical, mechanical and
of the place of the different storage
areas on the disk surface.
■ Jitter-analysis, i.e. fluctuations of the
shape of the data structures.
■ Servo parameters, i.e. the quality of the
signals used to keep the laser in focus
and on track.
A typical parameter of group a) is the
ratio ›I8/I8H‹. It tells how well the data
structures (called ›pits‹) provide a
negative interference (obstruction) of
the backreflected light. The superim-
posed measurement signal (figure 2)
shows the sinusodial waveforms, that are
generated by the pits if the scope trigger
is set on the leading edge of each pit
(this special picture is called ›eye-
pattern‹): Short pits generate a smaller
amplitude modulation than longer pits.
The longest pits with a duration of 8
internal clock units define the maximum
amplitude modulation I8/I8H, which
should be > 0.40 according to the
standard. This value needs to be measured
over the whole disk surface and tells
whether the molding process was uniform
over the whole disk.
A Reference Drive
for Blu-ray / HD-DVD
Important question is on which type of
drive or player such electrical tests
should be performed. Already in the early
days of CD it became clear that the vast
differences between the drives of
different manufacturers – even amongst ■ A good compatibility with a worldwide
a drive generation of the same manu-
facturer – generate very differing
measurement results. But since the CD
community was very dependent on
comparable measurements it decided to
define a certain drive as reference. In for the development team. In commercial
case of CD the Philips CDM-4 was chosen, drives the manufacturers try to cut back
LASER+PHOTONIK 50 SEPTEMBER 2004
in case of DVD the Pul-
stec SDP-1000 became
reference.
Toptica Photonics AG
together with the part-
ner AudioDev in Mal-
moe/Sweden have set
themselves the target to
develop a reference
drive for the next gene-
ration optical disks. To
achieve that target the
following prerequisits
needed to be accomplished:
electronical setup of the drive needs be
strictly according to the standard. This
guarantees that deviations in the
measured signals only derive from im-
perfections of the disk and not from
the drive.
■ All components of the drive are manu-
factured in-house or by reliable sup-
pliers and are not taken from commer-
cial drives. This guarantees that the
reference drive can
be manufactu-
red over
Figure 3:
Reference drive for
the next generation of
optical disks: Blu-ray / HD-DVD
a long period based on the same high
quality components and that the drive
could become part of a worldwide me-
asurement standard.
■ The drive should be based on a modular
platform that can be adapted to new
standards quickly and efficiently (Blu-
ray, HD-DVD and within these formats
the corresponding ROM-, R- and RW
versions).
established disk test system as it is re-
presented by the CATS system of
AudioDev for the DVD sector, allows an
easy approach for the users.
Especially item 1 was very challenging
CONTACT
TOPTICA Photonics AG,
82152 Martinsried / Germany,
Tel. +49 /89 /89 99 69 -0,
Fax +49 /89 /89 99 69 -35,
www.toptica.com
the numbers and the quality of optical
and mechanical components to reduce
the manufacturing costs – digital errors
caused by those lower quality compo-
nents are then compensated in the soft-
ware by very effective data correction
algorithms. Therefore it is possible to
fully read back the information of a
reference test disk on a drive that does
not fully comply with the standard. In
contrary the optical head of the reference
drive had to be designed from highest
quality components and corresponding
alignment possibilities to allow the pro-
duction of the perfect optical head using
interferometric measurements procedures.
Detailed calculations done with optics
simulation software (Zemax, Dif-
fract) have been essential. Also
the disk motor was demanding:
Since the reference drive should
be used for measurements of the
disk excentricity and flatness the
motor precision had to be better than
5 µm at a rotation speed of 6.000 rpm.
A stable and stiff mechanical frame was
necessary which even now includes a tilt
functionality (tilt of the disk along the
disk radius). State-of-the-art FPGA circu-
its allow to digitally analyze the 66 MHz
signals based on flexible programmable
logics, the decoding and navigation
algorithms being a demanding challenge
for the hardware and software engineers.
Figure 3 shows the reference drive of
Toptica, as it was developed for the Blu-
ray-format. Partner AudioDev presently
offers a measurement system based on
this drive aiming to R&D laboratories.
This should help industry in an early
phase to prepare for the violet future of
optical data storage. «
References
1. www.blu-ray.com
2. www.hddvd.org
Dr. Thomas Weber
is President of Toptica Photonics, Martinsried.